


Cut at the knees (I'll bash your head)

by AgapantoBlu



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Aaron loses the trial!AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drake survives, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, This prompt was pure ANGST okay?, for a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 22:30:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10796058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: The first thought that crosses his mind is “misundersting”.Because that’s all it can be, because there’s no fucking way he heard what he did and because the feeling in his stomach,torching and pulling and burning and trashing, is just the same he gets every time he hears that word.For the prompt: "In which Aaron loses the trial (blame our fucked up justice system) and is given a life sentence, while Drake goes free, Andrew plummets to rock bottom, Nicky basically leaves the States to give Andrew space as well as get as far as possible from his parents, Kevin gives up on Neil, and Neil cant do anything but watch his family tear and shred and burn before his eyes." -- Or, let's buckle up, kids, it's time for someangst.[Happy Ending - Trigger Warnings in the tags - Andrew's POV]





	Cut at the knees (I'll bash your head)

 

_**Cut at the knees** _

_**(I'll bash your head)** _

 

 

The first thought that crosses his mind is “ _misundersting”._

Because that’s all it can be, because there’s no fucking way he heard what he did and because the feeling in his stomach,  _torching and pulling and burning and trashing_ , is just the same he gets every time he hears that word.

Then he hears Nicky’s broken sob besides him, and Abby’s “ _No_ ” and Wymack’s “ _What?!_ ”. He hears Bee’s “ _Andrew…_ ” from behind him but he ignores it.

He’s standing before they can stop him and Aaron is all there’s left in his field of vision, he and his wide eyes filled with shock -  _and it’s fear, there, at the bottom, hiding in plain sight_ -and the memento of a mirror in deep night years before, the first time. The wood of the railing diving them digs into his hips but he ignores it, just like he ignores the guards coming closer, and instead he whips his hand around the back of the neck of his twin  _\- his brother, his real brother, his, his, his_  - and he all but growls, erasing the rest of the courtroom from his mind.

“Don’t,” he hisses, and there’s a world in those words.  _Don’t let them see you scared, don’t go without fighting, don’t give up and don’t be stupid. Don’t think I’ll let break my promise_. “I’ll get you out of there.”

Aaron’s mouth opens but there’s nothing on his tongue for Andrew. All he had for his brother rested on a swing of a brand new racquet, and look at where that got him. He can’t speak, but his body, his muscles relaxing for a second under the pressure of his twin’s fingers, they all talk for him.

_I’d do it again_ , Aaron’s eyes said.  _I’d do it again, and this time I’d do it hard enough to bash his skull in for good_.

Andrew knows it’s true, even as the guards handcuff his brother and pull him away. He knows because Aaron had that look for the whole trial, hissed those words on the witnesses’ bench, and because the jury called him “Guilty” just for that.

Aaron disappears and Andrew doesn’t want to turn toward the soft relieved whimpers he can hear on the other side of the room, to Cass’ loving words and her son’s reassuring lies, to the family portrait of his worst nightmare.

Andrew also has a self-destructive streak and so he looks.

Drake, honorable marine, a defender of his Country, in the loving embrace of his proud parents, with his mother dressed in dark shades like she were mourning the bruise on her baby’s head and his father tall and stony. Aaron, ex drug addicted and bastard son of a buried abusive mother, never stood a chance against  _that_ , not even to protect his maniac drugged-up criminal brother.

Andrew’s hand searches for the knives he had given back to Neil once more. He wishes he hadn’t. He wants them buried in Drake’s neck, so deep nobody will know if he had died for the slash in his throat or the wound to his spinal chord. He wants his blood, and that’s not revenge, no, it would be  _keeping his promise_.

Andrew doesn’t want his death for himself.

 

 

It’s only much later that Andrew actually pays mind to the fact that Neil didn’t really react to Aaron’s sentence. He does when they come back and the other Foxes ask and Neil tells them and  _laugh_ , bitter and defeated and deprecating, in front of Kevin’s denial.

“ _What were you even expecting?_ ” he says and Andrew hums in his throat, or at least he thinks he does. He can hear the sound, faintly, somewhere far, but he can’t be sure his own throat is moving. He doesn’t even feel his fists pulsing from where he’d punched the walls and trashed their hotel room on the notes of Nicky’s wails and Abby’s pleads to stop. 

(He had growled at her that begging never stopped nobody, and she had cried.)

Really, what had they all been expecting?

 

 

He finds Neil again sitting in front of the door to the roof.

“You shouldn’t go there,” he murmurs, and he has bloodshot eyes and pale skin and his feet fidget as if he were on the verge to run again.

He probably is. Neil has never had a _Fight or Flight_ instinct. It was always just _Flight_ , for him.

Andrew knows an offer when he sees it, especially in the shape of Neil’s trembling hand outstretched toward him with a packet of cigarettes in his fingers.

He turns his back on it and climbs the stairs down.

 

 

Andrew doesn’t show up to practice the next time. Nor the next or the next. He clings to his phone waiting for an answer from his layer for a loophole, a plan, a strategy, whatever the fuck it takes to get his brother out of jail.

He sleeps on Wymack’s couch. His room is still full of Aaron’s things and Nicky looks at him every day as if ready to throw himself at his feet begging for forgiveness. Kevin looks like a wandering ghost, unsure of what he’s supposed to do with himself, and Neil… Neil waits like he’s expecting for Andrew to do something.

Exploding, probably. Maybe hurting someone.

The first, he doesn’t.

 

 

“Nicky, you don’t have to-”

His cousin’s reply is muffled through the receiver of Wymack’s phone, but the man’s sigh reverberates through the silent walls of the apartment.

“Nicky, he doesn’t blame you. And even if he did, it wasn’t your fault.”

Of course not. Nicky was just as much at fault as Neil, as the man who worked at the gas station they stopped at that fateful day, as Kevin for accepting to come. Inconsequential. They played a part on the great scheme of things, but it wasn’t willing.

_Nothing of that was willing._

“Just take a few days to think about it. At least come and see him, for fuck’s sake! You can’t just leave without even talking to him, Nicky! I won’t play messenger for this, you have to face him. Andrew is-”

Andrew bangs his fist against the doorframe and Wymack flinches, more in surprise than fear. The phone in his hand in terribly silent and Andrew’s glare is icy cold.

He thinks he hears Nicky’s saying something before the line goes dead, but it’s muffled. He thinks it may be “ _I’m sorry_ ”, but he’s not sure.

Nicky boards a plane for Germany that very night, a few hours later, and it stops mattering.

 

 

Andrew doesn’t blame Nicky for leaving. He had been struggling with suicidal tendencies ever since he had been sent to the conversion camp, and the whole matter can’t have helped that. 

Erik, probably, can. Probably. Not completely, because Nicky is a self blaming idiot.

So no, Andrew doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t even blame Kevin for breaking down on the court. They don’t have enough players for a team, anyway, so what’s the point of keeping up the pretense? Let the man drink himself to a stupor and end up in the hospital, let him cry like a child and scream at Wymack -  _stop, stop, stop, you don’t get to act like the father you’ve never been, after all these years!_  -.

Let the vultures circle their school, searching for them, searching for  _him_. Let Neil burn of anger and wrath and raise Hell’s fury on any one of them to protect his poorly made family of fuck-ups.

Let Andrew be alone in Wymack’s bathroom, with a bottle of whiskey in between his legs and Renee’s knives dancing on his arms.

 

 

The upperclassmen just. Won’t. Stop. _Bothering_.

There’s no team anymore, the foxes are a useless mush of memories and hopeful dreams turned to ashes in front of the great American justice, so why can’t they just leave it alone? No, they must insist. Matt must insist in sticking his fingers down Kevin’s throat whenever he’s found passed out and one step from alcohol poisoning; Dan must insist in calling Nicky and sending him pictures and updates and whatever the fuck Snapchat is for; Allison must insist yelling on her phone at lawyer after lawyer,  _incompetents, idiots, bags of dicks and shit,_  because Andrew’s had long since told them to give up.

Renee insists with Andrew, and Andrew sticks a knife in her hand one night, pining it to the floor. She winces and opens her mouth, but not a sound actually escapes her lips. He aimed, he didn’t hit any bone or tendon but stuck his blade in between them; it still must have hurt.

“Stop. Talking.” He’s inhuman, the growl that leaves his mouth. It’s raw and hoarse and Andrew can’t remember the last time he spoke.

(That’s a lie. He remembers. His last words have been to a brother that’s now in jail, and there will stay for his life, because Andrew had had knives on him and hadn’t managed to use them, because Andrew had let the promise of alcohol and his arrogance in front of Luther get him into a trap, because time hasn’t changed him from the twelve year old biting on his pillow with Drake’s bigger frame towering above him.)

Renee leaves and Andrew goes to the bathroom.

He handles his knives as if it were their fault, for not moving properly, but he knows who’s really to blame so he makes himself his own target once again.

 

 

He doesn’t visit Aaron in jail. Ever.

Katelyn visits Aaron in jail. Every single time she’s allowed to.

Andrew cuts himself over a broke promise ( _I’ll protect you_ ) and Katelyn cries while making a new one ( _I won’t leave_ ).

 

 

“ANDREW!” Wymack’s voice is just as annoying as all the others as he punches on the bathroom door. 

Andrew doesn’t open because he doesn’t want to, and because this time he may have cut too deep.

 

 

He wakes up in the hospital, and all he gets of his doctor’s speech is that Neil picked the lock on Wymack’s bathroom door and that’s what saved him. Fucking junkie never minding his own business.

Abby is the one sitting on the chair at the left of his bed, and that’s probably because somewhere in his mind Josten still has some survival instinct intact. Andrew is going to kill him next time he comes into his sight. 

There’s Kevin lying on the couch besides the window and snoring lowly, and the jackets on his legs speak of many people wandering for the hospital. The clock on the wall calls midday so Andrew guesses the upperclassmen are still bothering and somewhere fetching lunch. He wonders if Renee is with them, with her hand in the conditions he left it in.

There’s also Nicky, slouched forward with arms crossed on the right side of the mattress, head turned toward the bed’s feet. His breath is too ragged for him to be asleep, so he’s probably just faking it because he can’t look his cousin in the eyes. It’s fine that way, Andrew doesn’t care.

Wymack comes some time later, with a certain someone at his back.

“I’ll kill you,” Andrew rasps out, and he means it, he means it completely, disturbingly and terribly.

It’s not Neil that looks at him with a cold demeanor, though. Whoever that is, he’s far ruthless than the junkie he’s used to. 

_Nathaniel_ , Andrew realizes, and Wymack’s fidgeting and furtive glances at his striker get a sudden new meaning.

Nathaniel Whatever-His-Surname-Is looks at him dead in the eyes and throws a cellphone in his lap. Andrew is petty and doesn’t want to take it, but the screen is lit on a picture and his brain is trained on focusing on  _this particular face_  after nights and nights of nightmares. 

Drake looks like he would if Aaron had bothered with the weights as much as Andrew did. His skull dutifully bashed in would make him unrecognizable to anyone, maybe even Cass, but not to Andrew. Never to Andrew.

“Car accident,” Nathaniel says, and it’s pure bullshit but his tone is too cold for Andrew to bother with a reply. “Aaron’s case is getting re-examined.”

Nicky’s head whips up so fast Andrew can hear his neck snap. “What?!”

“An irregularity in the arrest procedures.” The new voice comes from the door, it’s feminine and wary, but with a hint of respect. “Too bad Drake won’t be able to give his statement and that Luther and Maria were  _too shocked to notice anything_ ,” Allison quotes with a snarl. Andrew would expect Nicky to react but the names roll over him like he doesn’t even know whom they refer to. “Looks like you four and Aaron himself are the only witnesses of how things went. Oh, and a couple of guys that served in the army with Drake came forward. Apparently they only heard of what happened when they were notified with his death. They stated Spear often bragged about his adoptive brother and his twin when he drank a bit too much. They used to think he was delirious and never believed him until now.”

“External witnesses of a confession,” Wymack scoffed. “How convenient.”

All the eyes slipped away from Nathaniel, at the same time. Andrew would have laughed if he were still on drugs. Double standards, much, uh?

“Excuse me.” Nicky actually jumps on his seat when the nurse on the door calls them out and everybody else tenses up, but Andrew and Nathaniel ignore her. They both know she couldn’t have heard their discussion, even less put the pieces together. Instead, they opted for glaring at each other. “Mr Minyard needs to rest, so I’m going to ask you all to leave in the next fifteen minutes top.”

And if Nathaniel takes a seat on the couch as everybody else leaves and the nurse doesn’t even look at him, that only makes Andrew more pissed.

 

 

He waits for the news of Aaron release to be official, a couple weeks later, before bursting out of Wymack’s house and climbing on his car slamming the door.

His furious drive to Fox Tower has him finding Neil sitting on the roof, legs dangling off the edge, and looking down at him through the smoke of a lit untouched cigarette. Andrew joins him.

“How?” he asks, without sitting down because he’s actually considering pushing Neil off the edge. He’s evaluating pros and cons in the most analytical and serious way he can. If at the end the pros will be more, he knows he  _will_  push him.

Neil blinks at the landscape in front of him. “I called a favor in.”

“From  _who_?”

“My uncle.”

“Your uncle!” Andrew snarls a laughter. “Let me guess, the one you supposedly went to meet at Christmas?”

“Yes. But for real, this time. He was my mother’s brother.” Andrew is not sure he believes that. An homicide, bought witnesses, bought cops, the release of a murderer… That seems a big favor for one random uncle. “He’s the head of a criminal organization in the UK. Look up  _Hatford_.”

A criminal makes sense, Andrew decides. “And what did he ask for?”

Neil turns his head. It’s the first time he looks at him since they’ve been here and there are bags under his eyes but his hands are firm. “Nothing I couldn’t give him. He wanted informations on the Moriyama. He’s been fighting with them for control over some areas in Europe for years.”

A mob war. Neil got himself in the middle of a _fucking mob war_. Obviously, because he’s a fucking moron _._

“I couldn’t stand there and watch  _my family_  fall apart under my eyes, Andrew. I did what I had to and I would do it again. I’m fin-” 

“Don’t.” For once not a growl, it’s the most human sound Andrew has emitted in a long time now. “667%”

Neil smiles. His hand raises and offers the packet of cigarettes.

This time, Andrew takes them.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me at @agapantoblu.tumblr.com?


End file.
